Polish Festival’s Perfume Range Merges Scent & Sound

Acclaimed avante-garde music festival Unsound is launching a bottled perfume series of three scents created to enhance specially produced electronic music by Ben Frost, Tim Hecker, and Steve Goodman (aka Kode9).

Noise, Drone, and Bass versions of Ephemera are being launched at Unsound’s New York edition in April, with bottles going on sale later this year. The perfumes have been created by Berlin based scent experimentalist Geza Schoen.

“Scent and sound are both the most ephemeral of senses – without having a visible physical form, an image attached to them, they have the power to trigger emotions, uncover memories and move other senses,” said Unsound’s Malgorzata Plysa, the co-curator of the project.

“Having been working with various types of sound, often abrasive and physical, we have decided to try and blur the lines, adding sense of smell and discovering what the effects could be.”(Unsound)

The connection between music and smell was previously explored by US house star Roger Sanchez who, chatting to Skrufff in 2001 revealed scents were already an integral part of his DJ performance.

“At the beginning of the night, an hour before everybody comes in, I put Nag Champa incense all over the club and let it burn all night. People walk in and there is this smell that puts them in a certain frame of mind right away. That is incredibly important to me,” he explained.

“I’m not a hippy, but I love the sense of peace and calmness that candles and incense bring to my vibe,” he stressed. “They help me to bring out my spirituality and get back in touch with myself, and my emotions.”

In 2008, scientists from John Hopkins University announced that burning frankincense can help cure depression and suggested the church’s ancient tradition of using incense in ceremonies has much more than just a symbolic meaning.

“Perhaps Marx wasn’t too wrong when he called religion the opium of the people: morphine comes from poppies, cannabinoids from marijuana, and LSD from mushrooms; each of these has been used in one or another religious ceremony,” said study chief Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal.

“Burning incense really does make you feel warm and tingly all over.” (Science Daily)